DUSHANBE (IRNA) – The health team of Iran’s Red Crescent (ex Red Lion and Sun) is offering treatment services to patients in three deprives regions of Tajikistan as well as giving them medicine free of charge, IRNA news agency reported on May 14.

Mohammad Reza Mansouri, director of Iran’s Red Crescent in Tajikistan told IRNA that on the occasion of the Red Crescent and Red Cross week, three medical teams have been stationed in three deprived regions of Tajikistan to treat patients and provide them with their required medicine.

The week started from May 8 and will continued up to May 15.

For this purpose, Mansouri added, the first Iranian medical team comprising paediatrics, gynaecologists and specialized nurses as well as medicine consignment were stationed in a deprive area last Tuesday and started their free services.

Iran’s Red Crescent representative office was inaugurated in Tajikistan in 1997 and the medical and specialized centre of Iran’s Red Crescent officially started its activities in 2002.

Iran’s Red Crescent centre is equipped with general, gynaecology, orthopaedics, dentistry, paediatrics, emergency, radiology, ultrasound, laboratory, infusion and dressing and pharmacy and currently over 600 medicines are presented there.

Mansouri said that in addition to offering medical services, it will visit deprived areas with its full medical facilities and treat the patients free of charge. It has also active presence in unprecedented incidents and offers assistance to the victims.

The Red Cross is an international organization in charge of rendering assistance to the victims of natural disasters. The movement is called Red Crescent in Islamic countries (such as Arab countries, Iran, Pakistan and Turkey). In 1980, The Islamic Republic in Iran replaced the Red Lion and Sun with the Red Crescent, consistent with two existing Red Cross and Red Crescent symbols. Though the Red Lion and Sun has now fallen into disuse, Iran has in the past reserved the right to take it up again at any time; the Geneva Conventions continue to recognize it as an official emblem, and that status was confirmed by Protocol III in 2005.